Looking back: First jail built of sod

Published 8:18 am, Saturday, November 24, 2012

J.M. Shafer, editor and publisher of the early-day Hale County Herald, is shown in the old sod jailhouse that preceded the Hale County Jail built in 1908 and located at Fifth and Ash.

J.M. Shafer, editor and publisher of the early-day Hale County Herald, is shown in the old sod jailhouse that preceded the Hale County Jail built in 1908 and located at Fifth and Ash.

Photo: Herald File Phot

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Looking back: First jail built of sod

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As county officials continue to wrestle with prioritizing needed repairs on the county’s aging jail, the dusty files of the Herald offered a tantalizing look back at the community’s first correctional facility.

In its Nov. 19, 1972, issue, the Herald published an article quoting John Clayton Eiring, an 80-year-old who still had vivid memories of the sod structure from his childhood.

According to local cemetery records, published online through Unger Memorial Library, Eiring was born Sept. 5, 1892, and died Nov. 26, 1977 — five years after that article was published. He married Carrie Lillian Wallace on Oct. 17, 1915, and both are buried in Plainview Cemetery.

Eiring told the Herald in 1972 that he was just a boy, not quite 7 years old, when he moved to Plainview with his parents in July 1899 from Mobeetie in Gray County.

As he recalled, the four-room, one-story sod jail was located at the corner of Sixth and Baltimore, the present location of HCSB’s drive-through and ATM facility. Eiring said it was used for about three more years after the family’s arrival before it was replaced.

“People were arrested then, just like they are now,” said Eiring, who noted that many in those days were incarcerated for horse and cattle theft.

Those accused of misdemeanors were only left in the sod jail for an hour or two and fined. Others who had to stand trial for felonies often paid their bond to be released.

“We never had another jail until they built the courthouse,” Eiring explained, “and then the jail was in the basement until the present jail was built when Sam Faith was sheriff.” That jail, at Fifth and Ash on the southeast corner of the courthouse square, was replaced by the current facility in the early 1980s. Faith served as sheriff from 1922-28.

The 1972 article explained that the courthouse was built following an election in 1908 for the purpose of voting bonds of $60,000 for its construction. Actual cost of the completed courthouse was $70,600. The contract was let to W.P. McRae, who submitted a bid of $60,380 for the courthouse and jail.

Eiring’s account of the county’s original hoosegow differs slightly from what is contained in the 1937 book “History of Hale County, Texas” by Mary Lee Cox.

Cox wrote, “The first county jail was a small sod building of one room, built on the lot later occupied by J.N. Morrison’s Creamery, now the corner of Fifth and Baltimore streets.”

In late 1889, a move was launched to build the county’s second courthouse, a two-story frame structure costing $10,600. The county’s original courthouse, built a year earlier west of the courthouse square at a cost of $2,500, was subsequently sold to Dr. J.W. Wayland for use as a drug store.

“Diebold Safe and Lock Company was given the contract to build a jail (at the same time as that second courthouse) at a cost of $3,800,” Cox wrote. “The second courthouse was received by the commissioners court on Nov. 26, 1890, and rooms were assigned to the county officials. A jail was built on Lots 5 and 6, Block 39, Old Town of Plainview, east of the courthouse. This was a one-room building made of 2x4-inch lumber fastened together with spikes.”

The current courthouse was approved by voters in a bond election in 1908, and the contract for its construction and fixtures was let on Nov. 23, 1909, Cox wrote.

Upon its completion, the jail was moved into its basement where it remained until a new brick jail was built in 1925 on the southeast corner of the courthouse square at a cost of $48,000.